Ask fans at the Toronto International Film Festival whom they’d most like to meet, and the name George Clooney is bound to come up. But what if you asked Clooney that question?

This year, I asked every celebrity I interviewed to pick the film figure they’d most like to meet. There were no restrictions – living or dead, famous or infamous, actor or director or key grip. They could sit down with them over a meal and have a chat.

Turns out you can tell a lot about someone by who their heroes are. Emma Thompson plays a high court judge in The Children Act, but her two Oscars include one for her adaptation of Sense and Sensibility in 1996.

“I’d like to sit down with Aphra Behn,” she said, “the first female playwright in English.” Behn wrote in the 1670s and ’80s. “I’d ask her about how difficult it is to write stories as a female playwright a long time ago, and what stories she wants to tell and if she feels that she’s told them. And … do they get listened to?”

Aaron Sorkin, writer/director of Molly’s Game, chose fellow writer William Goldman, an Oscar winner for All the President’s Men and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. “I have had the opportunity to pick his brain many times, but I’m still going to choose a guy who took me under his wing in my 20s. Bill is the person I want to talk to about anything when it comes to movies.”

Writer/director Alexander Payne, at the festival with Downsizing, chose fellow writer/director Ernst Lubitsch, famous for such ’30s and ’40s hits as Heaven Can Wait, The Shop Around the Corner and To Be or Not to Be. “His movies are delightful, and the trajectory of his life was so interesting.”

Actors, not surprisingly, often pick other actors. Helen Mirren, starring in The Leisure Seeker, named Italian actress Anna Magnani, “my goddess. I don’t know that I’d have a question. I’d just want to be around her.” Jessica Chastain said Katherine Hepburn would be her choice. And Ed Harris couldn’t decide between Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum. Echoing Mirren, he said: “I wouldn’t even want to ask them anything, I’d just want to have a drink with them.”

Canadian actress Julia Sarah Stone (A Worthy Companion) would love to meet Meryl Streep: “I admire her so much as an actor and a human being. She has a quality in her that seems so unaffected by the industry. I would love to know how to do that.”

And fellow Canadian Tatiana Maslany, starring in Stronger, wanted Gena Rowlands. “She’s electric. She’s so unpredictable. I’m blown away by her. A Woman Under the Influence is my favourite film ever. I could watch her story over and over.”

Several names cropped up more than once. Toronto-born director Mark Raso (Kodachrome) picked Martin Scorsese, and so did Norway’s Joachim Trier (Thelma). Said Trier: “If I may be pretentious for a second, I think he’s the Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, of cinema. He’s exactly at that zenith, completely aware of cinema from its beginning … and having created that wonderful moment of ’70s and ’80s American cinema.”

Joe Wright, director of Darkest Hour, called it a tie between Scorsese and David Lynch. “When I was 15, my parents went away for a summer and I was left home alone with the VHS … and I watched Taxi Driver and Blue Velvet on repeat for three weeks. It was like being brought up on Byron and discovering Bukowski. There was a different form of poetry that could express the alienation that I felt as a teenager.”

Evan Rachel Wood, starring in A Worthy Companion, and Eugene Simon (The Lodgers, Game of Thrones), both chose Charlie Chaplin. “Not only was he so ahead of his time and a brilliant filmmaker, but he was such an insightful, brilliant man,” said Wood. “He hung out with Einstein! I could talk people and the world and politics and music and film and I’d never want that conversation to end.”

Francis Ford Coppola was the choice of Canadian director Kim Nguyen (Eye on Juliet) and first-time director Andy Serkis (Breathe), but for different reasons. “If you watch The Conversation again, it still talks about our society,” said Nguyen of Coppola’s 1974 film. For Serkis: “My favourite film of all time is Apocalypse Now, and I would really love to spend time with Coppola, because he’s been such an inspiration to me over the years.”

Charlotte Vega (The Lodgers) and Rafe Spall (The Ritual) each thought it would be fantastic to meet Tom Hanks. Bill Milner, co-starring in The Lodgers, got creative: “I’ll go for lunch with Rafe Spall, and hopefully Tom Hanks is there.”

German director Wim Wenders (Submergence) refused to conjure up the dead, but said: ”I’d love to have dinner with Charlotte Rampling. I think she’s fantastic.” But for others, resurrection was part of the game.

“Richard Pryor,” said David Gordon Green, director of Stronger. “I loved his ferociousness, and his balance of comedy infused with dramatic reality I think is incredible. He’s the most inspiring cultural figure of my lifetime.”

Ruben Ostlund, director of The Square, picked Luis Buñuel. “He had such a playful way of dealing with media … I really admire him.” And Terry Notary, a movement coach who plays an ape-man in The Square, wanted to meet Buster Keaton. “He was so amazing and expressive, and he did it all silently. He was a physical genius. He could say things without saying anything.”

And on through the years. Michael Shannon? “Krzysztof Kieslowski. The Dekalog is an astonishing achievement.” Stephen Frears? “Hitchcock maybe. He was just really, really clever.” François Girard? “I wouldn’t mind spending a Saturday afternoon with Kubrick.”

Liam Neeson? “For me, it would be John Ford – no, James Stewart actually. And Gene Hackman, who is alive and retired.”

Which brings us to Clooney. “Spencer f—ing Tracy,” he said, laughing and unable to censor himself at the thought. “Because he could do nothing and be great.” Clooney noted that in Tracy’s final role, in 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, there’s a scene where he looks down at his feet to figure out where he’s supposed to be standing, all while eloquently delivering his lines.

“If he did this,” Clooney said, glancing down furtively, “you’d say he looks shifty, but he just stares right down. Didn’t care.” He laughed again. “Plus, he was a bit of a grump.”

Bill Buford spoke about moving to Lyon with his family for a year to write Dirt, and then staying five, about their lives now in New York, and the future ...

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